Scholars of note decry the “Negative Body Image” from which many women seem to suffer. Public censure has already come from thinkers like Oprah Winfrey, Mia Freedman and Jackie O. This week, Australian news media adds its alto stylings to a distinguished chorus of disgust.
For their championing of chubby, several outlets have this week earned the Wankley. Among their number is, of course, A Current Affair.
“There are some insiders who are doing their best to change people’s perceptions about what is real beauty,” said Tracy Grimshaw last night of Australian Fashion Week. Many of the “Plus Size” models employed in a Rosemount Sydney Fashion Festival event had dipped into their sponsor’s unoaked product. The spectacle of big girls in tulle was broadly covered.
This moment was “An Australian First,” according to ACA. “Bigger girls are fighting back,” declared Ten news. The Herald Sun called it “history making“. Ninemsn also chose to evoke the great arc of history in its coverage of a show for the label city chic.
The instant may have been a first in Australia. Or make that a first in an Australian Fashion Week event. It is, however, hardly the first time designers even more fashion-forward than City Chic have employed the hefty. This didn’t stop the bulky end of the blogosphere from hailing the move with, “finally”. That anyone should give a toss that “real” women are “finally being represented” is odd. Reality is hardly the point of the directional, high-end fashion Australian Fashion Week claims to represent.
This art market was “aspirational” long before a Harvard MBA ever concocted the term. Really: the idea that plus size models mean anything to anyone is bollocks.
“Little steps, but things are changing,” said Grimshaw. Nothing, really, has changed. Other than a few hefty models scoring a novelty job. There may have been a few dents in the catwalk. That’s it.
News media has longed charged the lissom, fey models of Milan with promoting eating disorders and “Negative Body Image”. The idea that fashion contributes to any disease other than avarice underscored news coverage of the plus size show.
Really, apportioning blame to fashion is every bit as sound as making Grand Theft Auto responsible for violence. Grown women are capable of separating adipose reality from haute couture.
But, perhaps this disingenuous concern for “Body Image” wasn’t the point of visual news coverage. Perhaps straight, fretting women were not the intended eyeballs. “You’re holding your tummy,” drooled Ten’s chubby-chasing reporter to a size 16 hottie. The big girls of City Chic, it must be said, looked nothing if not Up For It.
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Thinkers like Jackie Onassis? She died May 19, 1994, so I wouldn’t have expected much thinking going on from her. Probably more than the other pretentious wannabe who has been going by that moniker recently though.
Frills and flounces on these ballooning women didn’t enhance their assets rather the short hems on hefty thighs, low cuts on buxom breasts and high heals on shapeless legs appeared that fashionistas were taking the micky out of them. These women could have looked hot had the designers taken a serious approach to turning them into stunners.
Hi Helen, from a long-time fan. I remember when you made JJJ listenable.
On this occasion I’m a bit confused what the point is and how they have earned a Wankley. Maybe I’m suffering Friday fatigue. But from the small segment I saw I thought lots of the women were magnificent and for a change some of the clothes were even made for wearing. High profile fashion shows are usually freak shows because so many designers try to out-bizarre each other rather than just make good clothes.
A fashion reseller friend years ago told me her theory that models are super-thin because the predominantly gay male designers idealize a boy-like look and are slightly mysogenistic. I thought her theory was a bit out there at first but over time I’ve come to think she’s right.
I will preface these comments by saying that I have not seen any of the fashion week coverage this week.
I do, however, see some ambiguity in this paragraph above; “Really, apportioning blame to fashion is every bit as sound as making Grand Theft Auto responsible for violence. Grown women are capable of separating adipose reality from haute couture.”
For a forty something Australian, the catwalks of Milan or Paris, are indeed as far removed from reality as cartoons and the content of video games. However, I suspect that the roots of self esteem issues and a life of yo-yo diets and other problems, are formed in adolescence before someone can consider herself a “grown woman”. For a sixteen year old who is bombarded with media images and standards of “perfect body weight” and “perfect body shapes”, the catwalk models and fashion events are in fact at the very core of the information that is being fed to her, and may indeed have an effect on her self esteem and self perception.
Yes, any healthy 16 year old will know the difference between reality and fiction/fantasy, and I do not believe that children are taught that violence is good by cartoons or video games. But Dolly and Cosmo are not sold as fiction or fantasy titles, and young minds take their cues from what they are offered by these and other titles (and their peers) as being desirable for their self image and self worth – some of those cues will stay with them well into adulthood, and can have a detrimental effect on their development and health. In various ways, the media sells the slim “super” models on the catwalks of Milan and Paris as the body type to aspire to, regardless of the real body type of the reader. For a developing adolescent the reality or otherwise of this information is much harder to determine than the information contained in Grand Theft Auto, or in a cartoon.
I can’t help feeling that there is also something disingenuous about the paragraph that I have quoted. The term “grown women” may have been used to qualify the comment very specifically, or just used to ignore some of the wider implications of the subject being covered. I well remember my own (male) self esteem issues from when I was 16, but while I have grown past them, I don’t discard those issues as being irrelevent to the youth of today. Broadening the range of (healthy) acceptable body types and role models can not be an unhealthy thing for society.
Totally agree, Kevin. I was pubescent in the days when Twiggy represented the ideal womanly shape, and the teen magazines I bought portrayed all the girls on their fashion pages as tall and impossibly skinny. (Those were at least drawings but these days the same effect is achieved digitally using ‘real’ looking photos.) It mattered a lot to me that my natural – and fairly normal – body shape apparently denied me the chance to be desirable and attractive (which of course I desperately wanted to be). It seems to me that things are even worse now for girls growing up. And even ‘grown women’ may find that what they ‘know’ and what they actually feel/believe deep down are different things. If Helen Razer has really never agonised even for a second about her thighs/stomach/bum/jeans size then I think she must be very unusual indeed.